Welcome
ABOUT PRINCETON ANTHROPOLOGY
The Princeton University Department of Anthropology takes an interpretive approach to the comparative study of contemporary cultures, their interactions, and their uses of the past.
Our framing of anthropological inquiry focuses on culture process and social change, the contested meanings of social action for participants and observers, the politics of the production of culture, and cultural diversity and transcultural flows of people, objects, and ideas.
Faculty in our department work on social and cultural encounters in both familiar and unfamiliar parts of the world.
Our common interests and special strengths include the cross-culture study of:
- Subjectivity and the creation of group identifications, as in race and racism, gender, ethnicity, and nation
- Medicine, science and technology studies, and biosocial categories.
- Comparative religion, ritual, literature, languages, and mass media
- Political, economic, and legal anthropology
- Interpretive methodologies, fieldwork experience, social theory, and the anthropology of disciplinary knowledges and ethics
